Cloud of Sparrows (42 page)

“Lady Heiko,” she said, and sobbed again.

“Thank you for your friendship,” Heiko said. “Orphans that we both are, we were kindly made sisters by fate, for a little while.”

Unable to control herself any longer, Hanako got to her feet and ran crying from the room.

“Do outsiders weep as much as we Japanese?” Genji said. “I doubt it. If they did, instead of science, they would have kabuki, like us.” He looked down at the tray. “She brought only one cup. What was she thinking? Oh, well.”

To Heiko’s amazement, he picked up the cup and held it out to be filled. Stunned, she could only stare at him.

Genji said, “I prefer it hot to cold, don’t you?”

Not knowing what else to do, Heiko took the flask from the tray and poured for him. He drank and offered the cup to her.

“My lord,” she said. She made no move to take the cup from his hand.

“Yes?”

“I cannot drink from the same cup as you.”

“Why not?”

“The condemned cannot touch that which has touched the lips of the lord.”

“The condemned? What are you talking about?” He took her hand in his and put the cup into it.

“My lord,” Heiko said. “I cannot. My crimes would only be made more heinous.”

“What crimes?” Genji said. “Am I dead? Am I crippled? Are my innermost secrets betrayed to my enemies?”

“I did not reveal my true nature to you, my lord.”

Genji sighed. “Do you think me such a fool?”

“My lord?”

“The most beautiful geisha in Edo chooses as her lover one of the least of the Great Lords. She does so because I am so handsome, charming, and witty. Of course. What other reason can there be? Fool that I am, it never occurs to me that subterfuge is in play, does it?”

Genji lifted the flask. Heiko had to put her cup out to keep him from spilling sake all over the mat.

“I knew you were working for the Sticky Eye,” Genji said. “There was no other possibility. The man carries a grudge beyond all reason. I knew, and I assumed all along you knew I knew, and knew that I knew you knew. We are not children or outsiders, after all. Such superficial deceit is the norm. It is like saying hello. We could hardly have begun without it, could we?”

He gestured for her to drink. She was too shocked to disobey. He retrieved the cup and she poured for him.

“You cannot ignore my treachery,” Heiko said, “or let it go unpunished. Your vassals will lose all respect for you.”

“Do I deserve punishment?”

“You, my lord? No, of course not. You have done nothing wrong.”

“Then why should I punish myself?”

“You should not. I am the one who should be punished.”

“Really? Fine. Make a suggestion.”

“It is not for me to say.”

“I command you to make a suggestion.”

Heiko bowed. “Execution or banishment are the only choices, my lord.”

“On the one hand, you are a geisha and my lover. On the other, you are a ninja and an agent of the Shogun’s secret police. How is it possible to avoid compromise of one kind or another? We live in a world of myriad conflicting loyalties. It is not purity, but the nature of the balance we achieve that displays our true character. I see no fault in either of us. We are both hereby pardoned.”

“My lord, you must not forgive me so lightly.”

Genji took both her hands in his. She tried to pull away, but he would not release her. “Heiko, look at me.” She would not. “The punishments you suggest would cause me unendurable anguish. Is that just?” She didn’t speak. He released her.

“So the love you claim you have for me is so weak, you prefer death,” Genji said.

“Kuma and I were the only surviving ninjas of our clan,” Heiko said. “How can I ignore my vow and live? I would dishonor him as well as myself.”

“If you die, I will have no life, just a joyless semblance of it. Must I pass such a sentence on myself?”

“There is nothing else we can do. It is our karma.”

“Is it? Who else in the castle knows of this besides Stark?”

“Everyone, by now. Bad tidings travel swiftly.”

“I mean officially.”

“Only you, my lord.”

“There lies the solution,” Genji said. He sat thoughtfully for several moments. “You only pretended to work for the Sticky Eye. All along, you have been reporting to me. Even now we are hatching plans whereby you can continue to convey useful misinformation to Kawakami, lulling him into a false sense of security. When we are ready, we will spring the trap and catch him in a fatal error.”

“That is utterly ridiculous. No one will believe it.”

“It is not necessary that anyone believe. Only that they pretend to do so, as we will pretend. Hidé, Taro.”

Doors on both sides of the room slid open.

“Lord.”

Genji said, “The time has come to reveal my most secret strategy to you. Enter and close the doors.”

“Lord.”

When Genji finished his revelation, both Hidé and Taro bowed deeply to Heiko.

Taro said, “Our thanks to you, Lady Heiko, for risking your life in such a dangerous endeavor. Our ultimate triumph will owe much to your courage.”

Hidé said, “I pray to the gods and Buddhas that I can attain even a fraction of your merit.”

The voices of both men were steady. Tears flowed freely from their eyes, however, tears they pretended were not there.

“Would there be samurai or geisha without kabuki?” Genji said. “We are so fond of melodrama, are we not?”

When she looked at him, she saw tears in his eyes, too, and the sight broke her resolve.

“Genji,” she said, and said no more, silenced and blinded by her own tears.

When the right moment manifests itself, vanish into the attack like a boulder plummeting into the void.

That left only one other highly distressing candidate. Kawakami. Ninjas were known to be among the operatives of the Shogun’s secret police. Had the Sticky Eye planned all along to eliminate Sohaku and Kudo to weaken Genji? Perhaps he never intended to accept their switch in loyalties. Kudo could have died in a trap set by Kawakami there in the mountains. Yet that also seemed improbable. It wasn’t a smart move. The smart move, if Kawakami intended to betray them, was to let Kudo kill Shigeru, have Sohaku help trap Genji, then kill all three at the same time.

None of the alternatives made sense. Sohaku had to attain clarity, and soon, or his actions would not yield good results, and he had to act, also soon. He had less than eighty men with him. His vassals in Akaoka were either dead or his vassals no longer. Until he knew what Kawakami’s intentions were, he couldn’t risk returning to Edo. Instead of protection, he might find arrest and interrogation.

At least his family was safe. When he had become abbot, they had moved to his father-in-law’s domain on Kyushu, the southernmost of the four main islands of Japan. They were therefore safely out of reach of Shigeru’s vengeance.

Abandoning all hope and fear, he needed to find the calm at the very core of his being. Then a governing solution would present itself on its own.

There was only one place he could go.

Mushindo Monastery.

Kawakami grimly looked through his telescope at the fleet of British and French warships anchored in Edo Bay. Arrogance of such magnitude was inconceivable. Only recently, they had bombarded the city. Now they sat there as if nothing had happened. No, it was far worse than that. They acted as though they were the wronged party.

Some southern lords had fired on outsider merchant ships in the Kuroshima Strait. In retaliation, the British and the French had blasted the forts to rubble, then had proceeded to Edo to destroy the palaces of the offending lords. Their aim being as crude as their understanding, the outsiders had bombarded the Tsukiji district rather indiscriminately. Instead of repenting, they demanded payment of an indemnity to compensate them for the damage suffered by their merchant ships, formal apologies from the responsible lords, and a promise from the Shogun that such an act would never be repeated.

Disturbing as these events were, none was as mortifying as the reports he had received from the battlefront. When British marines had come ashore, the courage of the samurai in the Kuroshima forts had evaporated. Faced with disciplined troops, massed rifles, and supporting artillery, they had fled in abject terror. Six hundred years ago, their ancestors had fearlessly met and defeated the Mongol hordes of Kublai Khan. Now they ran away without even putting up a fight. What a shameful day in the long history of their warrior nation.

The Shogun had been unable to decide on an appropriate response. Some hotheads advocated a declaration of war against the outsiders, all of them. Others, more frightened but not necessarily more reasonable, urged immediate acceptance of the outsiders’ demands. Consensus was needed to keep the government from splintering. To achieve it, the Shogun had taken an unprecedented step. Instead of making a decision and issuing proclamations, he had invited all the Great Lords, even those not allied with him, to come to Edo, meet in Council, and work with him to forge a united answer. He was, in effect, offering to share power with his traditional enemies, the excluded clans who had been waiting since Sekigahara to wreak vengeance on the Tokugawas. The stage was set for an historic reconciliation.

The possibility that it would actually occur sickened Kawakami. It would mean the end of his patiently devised plans to destroy the pretentious Okumichi clan. Worse, in such uncertain times, their reputation for prophetic vision might enable them to rise even higher than the undeserved heights to which they had already been elevated by popular opinion. Kawakami could almost picture it.

Genji would attend the conference. He would make some offhand comment that the Shogun would regard as serious advice. Action would be taken. In one of those coincidences that often seemed to materialize around the lords of Akaoka, the result would be better than anyone could have imagined. The Shogun, in his weakened state and clutching at every phantom hope, would then be moved to appoint Genji to his inner council of advisors. Kawakami didn’t need to be a prophet to know his own future once that happened. The vengeful Genji would manufacture a pretext forcing the Shogun to order Kawakami’s ritual suicide. He had served the Shogun faithfully for his entire life. Yet if his master had to choose, of course he would choose Genji. If he believed what the Shogun believed, Kawakami would do the same in his place. Secret police chiefs were easy to come by. Prophets were another matter.

What an atrocious turn of events.

But wait. None of this had yet occurred. And it would not if Genji never reached Edo. Kawakami had one last chance. It would have to be unofficial this time, since Genji was no longer an outlaw, had never been one, thanks to the retroactive suspension of the Alternate Residency Law. The country was in turmoil, however, and unexpected things happened at such times.

Sohaku had sent word that he was temporarily retiring to Mushindo Monastery. This had irritated Kawakami. Now he saw it was actually a fortunate development. On his way to Edo, Genji would pass between Mushindo and Yamanaka Village. Kawakami intended to be in the village at the appropriate time, along with his personal vassals, some six hundred in number. All armed with Napoleonic muskets, and all well versed in their use. Yes, everything considered, the situation was not necessarily evolving in an entirely unsatisfactory direction.

The only other worry, and it was a minor one, was his assistant Mukai’s continuing mysterious absence. Kawakami had sent three messengers to the dullard’s tiny northern domain. None had returned. This was very strange, very strange indeed. Had some domestic emergency drawn him away and embroiled him so completely he was unable to reply? Kawakami remembered Mukai’s wife, whom he had met on a number of unavoidable social occasions. She was nearly as characterless and homely as her husband. The same could be said of his two concubines. They seemed to exist only to fulfill the expectation that a lord of his rank would have at least two of them. No overwhelming passion was even remotely imaginable.

Sooner or later, Mukai would show up with an entirely rational, entirely boring reason for his return home. Perhaps he had stupidly interpreted the Shogun’s permission to leave Edo as an order to do so. That was precisely the sort of decision he would make without Kawakami to instruct him.

He dismissed his concern. More pressing matters demanded his attention. His spies were keeping watch on Akaoka. Heiko still shared Genji’s bed. His opportunity would come soon enough.

“One, I strongly advise against this journey,” Saiki said. “Two, if the journey is made, I strongly advise proceeding in force. No less than a thousand men. Two thousand would be better. Three, I strongly advise traveling in company with at least one other lord, preferably one considered reliably neutral by both sides. This will reduce the likelihood of ambush along the way.”

“Thank you for your sincere concern,” Genji said. “Under other circumstances, the danger would surely be as great as you fear. But I go to Edo at the Shogun’s invitation. That alone ensures safe passage.”

“Ten years ago, that would have been true,” Shigeru said. “Now the Shogun is no longer in firm control of the realm. Outsider warships blast his capital city with impunity. More and more often, his own Allied Lords as well as Excluded Lords disregard his authority as they will. In many domains, the regimes of the Great Lords themselves are shaky. Saiki is right. You should not go.”

Genji turned to Hidé. “What do you think?”

“Whether you go or not is a decision beyond my competence, lord. If you do go, then I agree with Lord Saiki. You should go in force. A thousand men will be sufficient, if you take the best.”

Genji shook his head. “If I march on Edo with a thousand men, the Shogun will see it as an act of aggression, and rightly so.”

“Inform him ahead of time,” Saiki said. “Say you will station them well outside the city, but within reach of the Kanto Plain, should the Shogun desire that they join with his forces against the outsiders. We can use Mushindo Monastery for the purpose.”

“In any event, we will stop there on the way,” Genji said. “Emily wants to check on the status of the mission building. Do you know if construction was ever begun?”

“No, my lord.” Saiki fought back the irritation he felt. He was very grateful to Lady Emily for saving Genji’s life. Yet he found it intolerable that concern for her irrelevant missionary work should intrude into a discussion of such seriousness. “Is it your intention to permit Lady Emily to accompany you to Edo?”

“It is.”

“Then I must add a fourth suggestion,” Saiki said. “Four, I strongly advise against her doing so.”

“Quiet Crane Palace is being rebuilt,” Genji said. “Emily must oversee some aspects of the construction. She cannot if she isn’t there.”

Saiki gritted his teeth. “Is architecture one of her talents?”

“No. But our architects need her advice about the design of the chapel.”

“Chapel?”

“I have ordered a small Christian church incorporated into the design.”

“What?” Saiki was aghast.

Shigeru laughed, which surprised everyone. He so rarely did. “Why be concerned, Saiki? A thousand years ago, Buddhism was an outsider religion brought here by Chinese and Korean missionaries. Now it is as Japanese as we are. A thousand years hence, the same will be said of the Christianity these new outsiders bring.”

Saiki said, “I did not realize you were of such an optimistic bent, my lord.”

“I am learning from my nephew as we go along.”

“You believe it is prudent to allow a woman to go on this potentially perilous expedition?”

“Not a woman,” Shigeru said. “Several women. Lady Heiko and Hanako will come along, too.”

Saiki refrained from exhibiting any further consternation. He only said, “My fifth suggestion is that we approach this journey with the seriousness that it deserves.”

“Heiko misses Edo,” Genji said, “and Hidé should not be deprived of every opportunity to ensure himself of an heir.”

“The greatest danger is not passed,” Saiki said, not permitting himself to react to the frivolous nature of such reasoning. “It still lies ahead.”

“And when it comes, we will meet it,” Genji said. “Until then, let us not indulge ourselves in needless worry.”

Saiki bowed. How ironic if they had survived their recent perils only to die on a mundane trip to Edo. Such was the nature of karma, and it was to karma that he now bowed as much as to his lord. “I hear and obey, my lord.”

“Thank you, Saiki.”

“How many men shall I prepare?”

“Oh, twenty or thirty should be enough. We won’t be in Edo long.”

“Our scouts report that Sohaku is at Mushindo,” Hidé said. “If he is still coordinating his actions with Kawakami, the thousand men Lord Saiki suggests are far from excessive.”

“Mushindo will be clear well before Genji gets there,” Shigeru said. “The nameless traitor will soon be doing all his coordinating with none other than hungry ghosts.”

“I can hardly believe my eyes,” Emily said. “First an apple orchard. Now this.”

She and Stark were in the midst of winter roses. They were the whitest white and the reddest red, and every shade of pink between them, from pale to deep.

Stark said, “This garden deserves its fame.”

Emily gave him a questioning look.

“Heiko told me another name for the castle is Rose Garden Keep.”

“Rose Garden Keep,” Emily said. “Cloud of Sparrows. Such poetry to describe a fortress sadly dedicated to war.”

“War is poetry to the samurai,” Stark said.

“Why, Matthew, you seem to have acquired much understanding of them during your recent travels with Heiko.”

“We had some opportunity to talk,” he said. Then he clenched his jaws shut. It was better not to say any more. Heiko said she’d tell Genji all about it. Maybe she would, maybe she wouldn’t. It was her business, not his.

They had been led to the rose garden by Hanako after Emily managed to convey her desire to be outdoors rather than in. The overabundance of chairs, tables, desks, and lamps in her room made her somewhat claustrophobic, and the parlor she shared with Stark was no better. Servants had brought out the incongruously plush sofa chairs upon which they sat. Emily reminded herself to tell Lord Genji about lawn furniture. He seemed eager to learn as much as he could about American civilization, as well as the American language.

“She seems such a delicate creature,” Emily said. “The privations of the wilderness must have caused her considerable discomfort.”

“She did okay.” Stark tried to shift the conversation elsewhere. “You and Lord Genji had more of an adventure than we did. If the rumors are true, you’re an angel who performed miracles to save his life.”